A variety of Christmas lights and decorative assemblies are available for illuminating and decorating Christmas trees. Conventional illumination of a Christmas tree involves the use of a plurality of separate elongated, insulative, electrically conductive wire strings on which are mounted several lighting elements (lamps) which are spaced apart from each other. Each of these lights element comprises a female socket member which is adapted to receive a screw-in or bayonet-type lamp, strung in series or in parallel. The strings are attached at one or both ends to an electrical plug which provides the source of electricity. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,057,976 issued to Sheila DuMong on Oct. 15, 1991. As mentioned in said patent, however, the mounting of such plurality of separate strings of lights on a Christmas tree is both is burdensome and time-consuming task. In order to simplify decoration of a Christmas tree by illumination, said patent provides a tree lighting assembly that incorporates a multiplicity of lamps in a net-like structure that can be readily mounted on a Christmas tree, and is easy to remove when not in use.
Other Christmas tree decorative illumination assemblies are described in the prior art patents disclosed in the DuMong patent. These are Crucefix U.S. Pat. No. 4,870,547 and Forrer U.S. Pat. No. 3,096,943. The DuMong patent also discloses two other patents, i.e., Ahoroni U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,720,773 and 4,736,282 which describe a mounting collar for use with conventional strings of Christmas lights.
In a more recent patent, i.e., U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,519 issued to David J. Dorfman on May 25, 1993, the patentee describes an electrical receptacle assembly which, in one embodiment, forms a flexible net. The receptacles receive light bulbs therein which, when illuminated, form a blanket of lights that can be draped over and around a Christmas tree.
Other decorative light assemblies for Christmas trees are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,338,585; 5,424,925 and 4,720,773.
For one or more reasons, the decorative light assemblies which have heretofore been described or used to illuminate Christmas trees have had one or more deficiencies which have limited their use for this purpose.